Field Crop 2025, Vol.8, No.1, 41-50 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/fc 42 This study introduces the physiological and molecular effects of drought stress on rapeseed, the identification of key genes and regulatory networks involved in drought resistance, and the potential application of these findings in breeding drought-resistant rapeseed varieties. It emphasizes the progress that has been made and identifies future directions for improving rapeseed drought resistance. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of rapeseed drought-responsive genes through transcriptome analysis. 2 Mechanisms of Drought Tolerance in Rapeseed 2.1 Physiological and biochemical responses When faced with drought, rapeseed has a variety of ways to cope. Studies have found that varieties with strong drought resistance have a characteristic that they can better lock in water, and at the same time, indicators of cell damage, such as electrolyte leakage and malondialdehyde levels, are relatively low (Waititu et al., 2021). However, not all varieties are like this, and some performance is unsatisfactory. A recent study is quite interesting and found that trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P) is particularly critical in the process of drought resistance (Yang et al., 2023). It can help regulate carbon allocation and help increase yields. In addition, rapeseed with strong drought resistance has another ability, which is its strong ability to remove reactive oxygen (Schiessl et al., 2020), which can reduce oxidative damage. But how these mechanisms work together may require further study. 2.2 Molecular mechanisms and regulatory pathways There are many ways to make rapeseed drought resistant at the genetic level. Recent studies have found that different varieties have obvious differences in gene expression when responding to drought (Liu et al., 2019). In particular, some genes in drought-resistant varieties are particularly active, mainly responsible for removing reactive oxygen and regulating osmotic pressure (Tan et al., 2020). When it comes to specific genes, several members of the trehalose-6-phosphate synthase family, such as BnTPS6 and BnTPS8, are particularly active when encountering drought. But what's interesting is that the expression levels of these genes are different at different growth stages. What's more complicated is that long non-coding RNAs are also involved, and they are mixed with mRNA and transcription factors to form a very complex regulatory network (Tan et al., 2019). So if you really want to understand how rapeseed resists drought, you may have to sort out all these relationships. 2.3 Role of epigenetic modifications in drought response When it comes to how rapeseed copes with drought, epigenetics is quite interesting. Wang et al. (2021) found that changes in DNA methylation and histone modification can adjust gene expression without changing the DNA sequence. It's like installing a fast adjustment switch on the gene, which can respond immediately when encountering drought. However, the performance of different genes is also different. For example, genes encoding heat shock proteins and β-2 tubulin are particularly closely related to histone modifications (Boldura et al., 2015). Another interesting discovery is that long non-coding RNAs often appear together with genes related to plant hormone signals, indicating that epigenetic regulation is indeed critical in the process of drought resistance. But to say how it works specifically, we may have to continue our research. 3 Transcriptome Profiling Techniques for Identifying Drought-Responsive Genes 3.1 High-throughput sequencing approaches Nowadays, the means of studying gene expression are becoming more and more advanced. RNA sequencing technology (RNA-seq) is a good example, which can detect the transcription of the entire genome at one time (Li, 2024). This technology is particularly useful in studying plant drought resistance, for example, it can find out which genes become particularly active or silent during drought (Shah et al., 2018). Yang et al. (2023) used this method to study rapeseed last year and found that drought can cause changes in the expression of thousands of genes. Interestingly, not only protein-coding genes have changes, but also long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that do not encode proteins are also very active (Tan et al., 2020). But then again, although a lot of data has been measured, more experiments may be needed to truly understand how these genes specifically affect drought resistance. 3.2 Data analysis and bioinformatics tools The processing of high-throughput sequencing data now mainly relies on various bioinformatics tools. Raza et al. (2021b) mentioned a common process, first using HISAT2 for sequence alignment, then using StringTie to
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